Chinese Sociological Review (CSR) is accepting proposals for a Special Issue on Families, Communities and Nation-States in the COVID-19 Pandemic. The editorial team’s deadline for proposal submissions is Sunday, 26 April 2020. We have a preference for proposals that draw on sociological perspectives to explain the varying responses and/or analyze the social impacts of COVID-19 in different countries, with Chinese societies as the focal point of analysis.

Since the first case of COVID-19 was
identified in Wuhan, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. On 11
March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared it a pandemic. As of 31
March 2020, there have been over 800,000 confirmed cases, and nearly 40,000
people have lost their lives. These numbers continue to rise. Various public
health measures—school dismissals, public space closures and city lockdowns—have
been implemented in different societies. Those measures are affecting billions
of people’s day-to-day lives. In the global fight against COVID-19, the
approach, feasibility and effectiveness of outbreak response efforts and policy
measures vary across sociocultural contexts and institutional regimes.

Therefore, we issue this urgent call to
sociologists/social scientists around the world: We invite you to offer
theoretical and empirical insights to explain the diverse responses to, and
implications of, this global crisis across societies. We are particularly
interested in manuscripts that address the following questions:

How are families, communities and nation-states responding to the pandemic?

What are the roles that social institutions play in helping local citizens cope with the outbreak?

What are the social impacts of the pandemic on families, communities and nation-states?

Submission Guidelines

Authors who would like their work to be
considered for publication in this Special Issue should email a proposal to specialcsr@gmail.com and the attention
of Editor Xiaogang Wu (Chair Professor of Social Science, Hong Kong University
of Science and Technology) or Guest
Editors Yue Qian (Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of British
Columbia) and Cary Wu (Assistant Professor of Sociology, York University) by 26
April 2020.

Proposals should be approximately 1,000
words and should include the theoretical and/or empirical approaches to
addressing the theme of the Special Issue, how it will advance sociological
knowledge, and its importance to understanding the social impact of COVID-19.

The editorial team will consider the pool of proposals received by the deadline. They will select proposals that they consider to be of the highest quality and invite the authors to submit a full paper. Invitations to submit full-length research papers will be sent out to authors by 1 May 2020. The full-length papers will be due on 30 June 2020 for peer review. The special issue is expected to be published online before September 2020.